Is Mexico California’s ‘Great Neighbor?’

After President Trump threatened to cut off aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and threatened to shut down the border with Mexico, Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard, said “Mexico does not act on the basis of threats. We are a great neighbor.” Ebrard is a former Mexico City mayor and contender for president of Mexico but many Californians may be unaware of his campaigns in the United States.

“It was after hearing Donald Trump speak,” Ebrard told Francisco Goldman of the New Yorker in November, 2016, “that I decided to get much more involved, beyond just giving opinions.”

Ebrard compares Trump to Hitler and charges that Trump is guilty of xenophobia.

As Goldman notes, Ebrard had “previously worked with Voto Latino, and with other voter-registration and participation groups in California, Arizona, Florida, Chicago, and elsewhere, and he is working with those groups again now.” During the 2016 campaign, Ebrard explained, he went “from being a consultant to somebody committed to direct political action.” This direct action was in the United States, not Ebrard’s own country.

Californians might imagine former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg comparing Mexico’s “socialist messiah” Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) to Benito Mussolini. Or imagine Bloomberg campaigning openly for Antonio Meade, candidate of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional that ruled Mexico for most of the past century.

The chances of such a thing happening are zero, but a ruling-class Mexican politician such as Marcelo Ebrard eagerly conducts “direct political action” in the United States on behalf of Hillary Clinton. This all went down without any charges of collusion or election interference by American politicians and the establishment media.

Californians might wonder if a “great neighbor” would conduct such interference. They might also note that Mexico aids the passage of massive Central American “caravans” to California, the state on the U.S.-Mexico border farthest from Central America. It would be hard to blame Californians for believing that their state is the destination of choice because of sanctuary laws that protect criminals and a host of taxpayer-funded benefits including K-12 education and in-state college tuition. In California, false-documented illegals can even get appointed to government positions.

Last year, Mexicans sent back a record, sent $33.48 billion to the Mexican motherland, an increase of 10.5 percent from 2017. That is impossible without massive inputs from American taxpayers. As Marcelo Ebrard’s candidate Hillary Clinton noted, “one-half of undocumented workers pay federal income taxes.”

While intrusive with the United States, Mexico takes a hands-off policy with Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro. As Andres Oppenheimer notes, nearly 50 nations, including Japan and Switzerland, recognize Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president, supporting the restoration of democracy in Venezuela.

“The big exception is Mexico,” Oppenheimer explains, and López Obrador, who invited Maduro to his inauguration, “is not even demanding free elections in Venezuela, like his predecessor did.” Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard wants “dialogue” with Maduro and says “we’re not taking sides.”

Puzzled Californians might note that Lopez Obrador’s Morena party, the National Regeneration Movement, has long-standing ties with Venezuela and Cuba. As Andres Oppenheimer explains “Morena’s leader Yeidckol Polevnsky has publicly voiced support for the Cuban and Venezuelan dictatorships.”

According to ABC Noticias, Yeidckol Polevnsky, also known as Citlali Ibáñez Camacho, runs the Morena party, and she has the last word on all candidates. In 2008, as vice president of the Mexican senate, Polevnsky was part of the Task Force on Renegotiating NAFTA. According to El Economista columnist Eduardo Ruiz-Healy, Polenevnky’s practice of insulting all who disagree with her is “more similar to American president Donald Trump than president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.”